In the running for the £500 Young Poet Award are from the USA, Rachel Litchman, Michigan, Joyce Zhou, Illinois, and Erin O’Malley, Pennsylvania; from the UK Roberta Maia Sher, London and Izzy Wythe, Oundle; and from Singapore Vernon Yian.

Young Poets judge, New York writer and teacher Maya Catherine Popa, said: “It is wonderful that a prize with this kind of international visibility aims to encourage young writers from around the globe. As a teacher of this age group, I am often amazed at the creativity, insight, and skill of young writers. I wish more prizes aimed to showcase and support these voices.”

The Hippocrates Prize attracts health professionals and established poets alike, with entries this year from over 30 countries. This year, themes have ranged from illness in children to recovery from depression and from cancer to treating victims in conflict zones.

The Hippocrates Young Poets Prize for Poetry and Medicine is awarded is open to anyone in the world aged 14 – 18 for a new poem in English of up to 50 lines on a medical theme.

Shortlisted in the Hippocrates Health Professional category are Kathy D’Arcy from Cork, Ireland, who has worked as a doctor and youth worker, Iora Dawes, from Stafford, who has worked as a medical social worker, and respiratory physician Andrew Dimitri from Sydney, Australia, who is also a field doctor for the international humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières.

Competing for the top award in the Hippocrates Open category are poets Claire Collison from London, England, Rosie Jackson from Somerset in England and Alisha Kaplan from Toronto in Canada.

With a prize fund of £500 /~ USD 700 for winning and commended poems, the Hippocrates Young Poet Prize is one of the highest value poetry awardsof its kind in the world for a single poem. Since it was founded in 2012 by clinical professor Donald Singer and poet Michael Hulse, there has been interest in the Hippocrates Young Poets Prize from 15 countries, with winners and commended poets from the UK, USA, Hong Kong and Canada.

Maya Catherine Popa is a writer and teacher in NYC. A 2015 Ruth Lilly finalist, she is the recipient of the Poetry Foundation Editor’s Prize for review. Her poetry appears in Tin House, Kenyon Review, Poetry London, and elsewhere. Her criticism and non-fiction appear widely, including in Poetry, Poets & Writers Magazine, PN Review, and The Huffington Post. Her chapbook, The Bees Have Been Canceled, is forthcoming from DIAGRAM New Michigan Press in the U.S., and Southword Editions in Ireland, in winter 2017.

Her awards include the Hippocrates Poetry Prize, 2nd place in the Magma Poetry Prize, 3rd Place in the Narrative N30B Prize, the Gregory O’Donoghue Competition, Parallel Universe Competition, and the Oxford Poetry Society Martin Starkie Prize. She holds an MFA from NYU and an Mst in Writing from Oxford University, where she was a Clarendon Scholar. She teaches at the Nightingale-Bamford school in New York City.